Are African trackers really that good?

[RockAndSage]

Apologies if this is a sidetrack from the thread...and just meant as an anecdote, not disagreeing with what you said. .

I am half Inuit, my Dad was in the Air Force and spent a couple of years in northern Alaska, where he met my Mom. Dad was from Maine, worked for the Forest Service and US Geological Survey before he joined, and knew his way around a compass and around the Maine woods...

He said once that he and my Uncle Nathan (Mom's brother) went seal hunting in an umiak (boat made of walrus skin). They went far out to sea, and had to dodge a lot of free ice on the journey home. There were no landmarks to be seen where they were.

He said Uncle Nate would go left around one large floe, and right around the next...Dad had no idea where they were. He was impressed as hell, when the first land they could see was the village of Unalakleet where they had departed from. He said he had no idea how my Uncle did it, and strongly doubted his own ability to have done the same feat.

Just a story from a time mostly in the past....

I enjoyed reading this, and have heard similar things about Saharan and Polynesian navigation, from old exploration accounts - zero landmarks, but the locals have a "feel" for it. Desert nav might include subtle tells like sand ripples from prevailing wind, and cloud whisps that might indicate distant water sources they know the location of. Polynesian nav apparently included feeling slight shifts in the way the boat feels when encountering different depths, currents, or water temperature shifts from touching it, along with color shifts and wave patterns.

With your uncle, I wouldn't be surprised if any of that was operating as background code in the super-computer between his ears. I'd also be surprised if there wasn't some magnetic sense guiding him home, especially that far north, homing-pigeon style. We have magnetite in surprising amounts in our brain, along with a particular deposit of it right where our "third eye" is, just above our eyebrows in the center of our forehead, that some researchers have speculated is related to navigation or perceiving magnetic direction.